La Femme Recommends...The Deep Blue Sea

Old love, new love, true love, unrequited love, doomed love:  these are the many faces of love that Terrence Davies shares with us in 2012's The Deep Blue Sea.  Based on a play by Terrence Rattigan, the film opens with Hester (Rachel Weisz) attempting to end her life.  In this stunning first sequence, we begin to piece together what has led her to this desperate but seemingly very deliberate and conscious act.  Like so many woman before her, she is caught between two men who couldn't be more different.  In one corner she has William, her rich, well bred, perfectly lovely, but perfectly boring husband (Simon Russell Beale, sad, angry, and generous).  In the other corner is the victor, Freddie (a rakishly devilish Tom Hiddleston who shows us how easy it would be for a woman like Hester to fall for him and also why he will never be able to fulfill her the way she thinks he should), a handsome, charming, young Air Force veteran who is also prone to anger and immaturity and addicted to a lifestyle he cannot afford.  After a Brief Encounter (pun intended), Hester leaves William for the stifling boardinghouse where she lives with Freddie as "Mrs. Page" (her husband vindictively refuses to grant her a divorce) where she is alternatively blissful and neglected.  All three performances are magnificent but this is Weisz's film, as she perfectly puts the viewer in Hester's adulterous shoes and makes love an affliction that looks wonderful and dreadful, often in the same moment.

Terrence Davies has a very particular visual style, and you feel as if you are in an old photograph:  hazy and dreamlike, like a forgotten memory. The film looks lived in and the world of post war London is fully realized in beautiful burnished tones, but this is not kitchen sink drama.  I would compare it more to the lushness of a Douglas Sirk film than the gritty realness of Mike Leigh or Alan Clarke.  There is something very luxurious about the way the movie looks even though Hester is living a life where she has no money and she really has no prospects, but as long as she has the conviction of her love for Freddie, the little boarding room she lives in is warm and welcoming (and beautifully art directed, as is the whole film). Memory and the way it is triggered is a device we see often in the film and the flashback scenes are some of my favorites.  Often Hester will go somewhere or see something that will trigger a memory of a time with Freddie or her husband.  For example, after having a fight with Freddie she runs down in the Underground and seems to contemplate throwing herself in front of the train.  But she slowy realizes she has been in this station before, in the war, hiding from the bombs with her husband and many other citizens of London.  The sequence that follow is seamless: one moment we are in the present, the next, the past lazily comes into focus as Hester remembers the sounds of the huddled masses singing an old song which merges with the sounds of the blitz.  The scene is quietly moving for reasons that are not easily expressed; the feeling is something universal even though the experience is Hester's own.  Davies uses music to great effect, including a stunning pub sing along that fades into an intoxicatingly sexy slow dance between Hester and Freddie that illustrates without any dialogue how she becomes obsessed with him and how he sucks her into a completely different world than she has ever known.

On the surface, The Deep Blue Sea is really a banal love story that has been told many times.  A woman leaves her passionless marriage for a dashing cad and not everything is happily ever after.  But I found the film to be deeply affecting because of its exploration of what love can be.  What happens when one partner loves the other much more deeply and truly?  We find that Hester doesn't need Freddie to love her back, instead she finds the strength in that emotion to propel her through the trials and tribulations she faces.  And we learn that it's not that Freddie doesn't love Hester, in fact he does, quiet deeply. He is just incapable of loving her with the depth and breadth that she loves him.  Her love for him is the thing of sonnets, while his love for her is just a catchy tune he whistles in the street.   Even when everything is going tits up (as Freddie might say) and her husband William gives her a chance to come back to him and have a stable life, she can't give up the possibility that everything will work out, that she will be happy with Freddie again.  She tells William "Lust isn't the whole of life, but Freddie is, you see, for me. The whole of life. And death."  The notion that the love she feels is so deep and so all encompassing is at once romantic and utterly foolish.  You want to shake her to her senses but the heady perfume of love seduces the viewer too.  Like so many Hesters before her, she is branded with the Scarlet A and must face the scorn of society and the people who used to be so important to her.  Hester is an interesting figure, because she is at once defined by her love for one man and her lack of love for the other but she is also making a conscious choice, and, in a way, she is a very feminist and very strong character (much like Hester Pryne).  She is willing to give up everything, even her life, for this one thing she ardently believes in: her love for Freddie.  Love in this case is an almost rebellious act of self discovery and in the end it may not matter if he loves her the same way back.  Instead, her love for him is a force that can drive her to euphoria or destruction and whichever way it leads her she is in it for life.  And death.

Julie

It's Noon Somewhere...Pink Lemonade Margarita

I love margaritas, but then again, doesn't everyone?  Frozen or on the rocks, traditional lime or strawberry (or even a completely bastardized one I had in Oklahoma City that was served in a martini glass with an olive!).  I love the tartness, sweetness, salt, and that kick of the tequila.  A margarita is a classic cocktail but it is also one of the easiest to f*#$ up.  How many times have you gone to your local Mexican restaurant and had a sugary, syrupy, weak, calorie laden margarita?  I remember when K and I first started making cocktails many moons ago and we bought margarita mix for the first time.  It calls for a mix of 4 oz mix to 1 tequila!?  The fools we were, we drank margaritas like that for a while.  No wonder margaritas have the reputation of being one of the most calorie filled cocktails out there.

Bastardized but still delicious!

Well, it doesn't have to be that way! K and I do make traditional margaritas using Trader Joe's wonderful mix that has no hint of chemical flavor of so many margaritas.  Of course, you can always use lime juice and simple syrup as well.  Today though, I am preparing a margarita with no mix at all, instead I am using pink lemonade in place of it.  I like the extra citrus and the pink color gives it an especially fun, girly vibe. This is a wonderful cocktail to remind you of carefree days and warm nights of a vacation or a sitting on a patio on a summer afternoon.  But I think it can be enjoyed anytime.

Pink Lemonade Margarita:

2 oz Tequila
1.5 oz pink lemonade
1 oz  triple sec
1 lime

Mix all together in a shaker and serve on the rocks.  I usually prefer a salted rim but I tried this with both a salted and a sugar rim and I think either would work beautifully.  Garnish with a lime slice.  I don't love how it looked in our margarita glasses so I chose to use a double old fashioned glass but you could serve it on the rocks in a margarita glass as well.

Julie

David Cronenberg Marathon: Part 2

Dead Ringers:  By far my favorite film of the marathon, Dead Ringers is the descent into despair of twin brothers/hot shot gynecologists Beverly and Elliot Mantle. Elliot is the stereotypical playboy - women want him, and men want to be him. But, he also loves his quiet and solemn brother Elliot, so after he sleeps with a woman, he sends Elliot out with her so he can enjoy the same pleasures.  This unseemly system keeps them in perfect harmony together and they have their lives planned out (Elliot will do the research and Beverly will present the papers once they get a tenure at a university).  Until that is  a new client and eventual lover, Claire Niveau, a famous actress on location in Toronto, comes into their lives and figures out their little ruse.  Beverly quickly falls in love with her and makes the mistake of indulging in Claire's drug habits.  From there, we see an incredible tailspin into drug addiction and insanity (also crazy, quasi-medieval gynecological devices).  There is some typical Cronenbergian creepiness, but it is used sparingly and, instead, the film has a quiet sense of dread throughout.  For editing and special effects geeks there are also some amazing sequences with both Elliot and Beverly in the frame.  The real special effect though is Jeremy Irons giving one of the most spectacular performances ever put to celluloid.  Iron's plays each brother as their own person but many times makes his performance a bit ambiguous so it takes a moment to figure out if he is Elliot, Beverly, Beverly playing Elliot or Elliot playing Beverly.  The fact that it really takes only a moment to know exactly what character he is without costume or makeup changes expresses just how much of an achievement this performance(s) is.   Irons individualizes both characters but, at other times, making it ambiguous which one he is playing.    I think Iron's performance exemplifies one of the most interesting themes of the film; that even though the brothers are two people, they are really just one unit.  If Elliot is happy, then so is Beverly, if Beverly is sick, so is Elliot.  Irons show this symbiosis in his performance.  The two brothers are not Siamese twins physically but instead are bound to each other spiritually and emotionally.  Heartbreaking, incestuous, and strange, Dead Ringers stands out in Cronenberg's body of work as his crowning achievement.

Crash:  On this blog, I try to only recommend films and not trash ones that I dislike.  Unfortunately, with our marathons, sometimes you encounter a movie that is just so not your cup of tea.  My immediate, initial, and lasting impression of this film can be summed up quite succinctly: Crash is one of the worst movies I have ever seen.  James Spader (who, at times can be creepily sexy... in other films) is James Ballard, a successful producer married to a gorgeous woman with a fetish: the only way they can get off is to have sex with other people and tell each other about it.  After he gets in a terrible car crash the woman in the other car, Helen, (Holly Hunter) flashes him her breast (as her dead husband has flown through both windshields.  She doesn't seem the least bit bothered).  As James finds himself going deeper and deeper into a new fetish: cars.  This includes, but is not limited to:  having sex in cars, caressing cars, crashing cars, and recreating celebrity car crashes.  The film is supposed to be an erotic thriller about sex and death, but it came off as sterile, uncaring, and, frankly, a little dumb.  I think if Cronenberg had infused similar humor as had been in some of his other films, the movie could have been much more interesting.  Instead we have a group of people who really don't seem to care about their own lives and honestly don't seem to be enjoying the supposed thrill they are supposed to be getting from their car fetish.  Elias Koteas is the films's one bright spot for me as the leader of the car crash societyVaughan.  Koteas  channels a young Robert DeNiro a la Travis Bickle  and delivers a charismatic, creepy, bizarre, sexy, depraved and joyful performance.  If only the rest of the film had as much life as Koteas delivers.

Mon Boo's big scene!

Cosmopolis:  Unlike Dead Ringers, which I loved and Crash, which I hated, Cosmopolis mostly just left me cold.  The story centers on Eric Packer, (Robert Pattinson), a young billionaire travelling across town to get a haircut.  What starts out as a fairly normal day becomes worse and worse as it goes on: there are protesters all across town, Packer is having a fight with his new wife, he may be losing his fortune and there is a man threatening to kill him.   Packer is stuck in the car but receives visits from various employees, business advisers, lovers, and the doctor who gives him a daily prostate exam.    Pattinson gives a surprisingly (and somewhat paradoxically) charismatic performance of a young businessman who seems completely dispassionate, and there are a couple of standout performances by Juliette Binoche, Sarah Gadon, and of course, my beloved Mathieu Amalric, who is the only person who seems to be having any fun with the surreal premise and slightly heightened environment.  With highly stylized dialogue, the film can be a bit of a slog because everyone seems to be spouting faux philosophic treatises and most of the dialogue is delivered in a monotone from everyone.  The film builds to a showdown between Pattison and the man who wants to kill him (Paul Giamatti, also doing his best "crazy homeless person" impression). But ultimately, like Eric , I didn't care what happened to him or any of the other characters (except Mon Boo, of course).

Julie